In scandals and power struggles obscured by time and legend, the wives, mistresses, mothers, sisters, and daughters of the Caesars have been popularly characterized as heartless murderers, shameless adulteresses, and conniving aristocrats in the high dramas of the Roman court. A classicist and researcher for Bettany Hughes' Helen of Troy and for BBC docudramas on the ancient world, the author pulls back the veil on such fascinating women as Cleopatra, Octavia, and Livia, giving them the chance to speak for themselves and observing how they became archetypes for women of power throughout Western history.

"A book both scholarly and racy ... [that] restores to life some of the toughest, most colorful, and most bizarre women who ever existed."—Sunday Times (London)